(air swooshing)
- [Narrator] The seamless bridge concept
originally proposed in Australia,
eliminates expansion joints
between the bridge and the pavement.
Continuously reinforced concrete pavement, or CRCP,
is used to create a transition zone between the bridge deck
and the CRCP to reduce long-term maintenance cost
and improve durability of the bridge.
The Center for Transportation Research
recently completed a study on the performance and design
of Seamless bridge CRCP systems
to closely analyze the behavior
of seamless bridge pavement systems
and propose general design recommendations
for practical applications in the US.
- Those traveling, public's probably notices this,
if you go over a bridge in January when it's 20 degrees,
there'll be kind of a little bit louder bump,
and that's because the bridge joint
has opened up a little bit.
But also that joint allows a lot of corrosion causing agents
to actually pass from the bridge deck down into
the girders and substructure elements
leading potentially to corrosion issues.
locking up of the joints and the bearings,
they end up kind of impacting the long-term behavior.
- If we can develop a bridge that is jointless,
in fact, we have solved major percentage,
we have eliminated a major cause of corrosion in bridges.
- The goal was to try to look at the viability
of using the seamless technology here
and then to try to develop a bond breaking element
that you could put between the embankment,
the foundation onto the embankment,
and that slab that you're extending
that allows the concrete slab then to expand and contract.
We started off by evaluating various bond breakers
in a smaller test setup to try to look at
we could cast the concrete
that would prevent the concrete from bonding then
with the base material that we have,
and then we would subject that to some shearing
and get a measurement to the coefficient of friction.
So we did kind of find, we think the bond breaker
that we would need from that.
And then we've also developed a
pretty comprehensive design methodology.
- What has been done now is the laboratory study.
So the next phase is to do an actual implementation
of this research on an actual bridge.
With implementation, we'll be able to monitor
the performance and correlate the field study
with the laboratory result that we have collected.
- We think it'll improve the ride quality on the bridge,
but also long-term maintenance issues,
the costs of maintaining that bridge long term
will be reduced.
So there's a, we think good viability on a wide range
of Texas bridges where this might
provide a very good solution.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publications for this project,
please visit the Texas DOT research library
at the link shown below.